Five additional pages of confidential documents, dating from the time when he was vice-president, were found in Mr. Biden’s residence in Delaware, the presidency lawyer announced, Richard Sauber, Saturday .
mo12345lemonde with AFP
As the discoveries accumulate, embarrassment increases for Joe Biden. Five additional pages of confidential documents, which date from the period of the vice-president of Mr. Biden (2009-2017), were found in a room adjacent to the garage of the family home of the President of the United States, in Wilmington ( Delaware), said the lawyer for the presidency, Richard Sauber, Saturday January 14.
These pages were found Thursday evening when Mr. Sauber said, the lawyer said in a statement. Mr. Sauber explains that he supervised the transmission to justice of a first set of confidential documents, found on site earlier in the week. He recalls that by searching the president’s home on Wednesday, personal lawyers of the president had already found, in this same room, a page marked as a confidential document.
Not having the authorizations necessary to consult these kinds of documents, the lawyers of Mr. Biden did not push their research and warned the Ministry of Justice, specifies the adviser of the White House. Thus Mr. Sauber discovered these five other pages. The representatives of the Ministry of Justice who accompanied him “immediately” took possession of it.
an independent investigation open
In addition to the files found in Wilmington, classified documents dating from the presidency of Barack Obama had been discovered in November at the Penn Biden Center, a Washington reflection circle where Mr. Biden once had an office.
All of the classified documents found were awarded to the Ministry of Justice said the White House on Thursday, assuring that it “will continue to cooperate in the investigation of the Ministry of Justice”.
The Minister of American justice, Merrick Garland, appointed an independent prosecutor to conduct the investigation. “I signed a document naming Robert Hur Special Prosecutor” who “authorizes him to investigate any person or entity who could have violated the law” in this case, he said during a speech on Thursday.
If the White House communicated without waiting for the files found in Wilmington, it only recognized on Monday the discovery of those who were in Washington, two months after the revelations.
The case is politically delicate for Mr. Biden, when he plans to represent himself. Despite numerous differences on the substance of the file, she recalls that former President Donald Trump is also the subject of an investigation for taking official documents in his Florida residence. The Republicans are thus trying to use the comparison to whiten the former president.
One of the fundamental differences between the two cases, however, lies in the will of Mr. Trump and his lawyers to conceal and subtract these documents from the national archives, which justified the designation of a special advisor, Jack Jack Smith, by the Minister of Justice. Today, Trump and the Republicans claim that he had authority as president to declass the documents carried away. However, no trace of declassification has been found.